Togo to hold Pay Camp: a Financial and Technology Forum to promote eCommerce

Togo to hold Pay Camp: a Financial and Technology Forum to promote eCommerce

November 15th, 2014 – Lomé, Togo will host the Pay Camp forum, which the organizers say will be a forum to ‘force’ the Togolese government to enact laws that will protect the country’s e-commerce websites.

It is said that e-commerce is still fairly a new concept among the 5 million plus Togolese citizens. The Pay Camp forum is expected to change this by aggressively marketing the concept locally with the end goal being to position Togo towards becoming a cashless society. The event has been themed, “The Challenges of e-commerce and electronic methods of payment in Togo.

One young entrepreneur, Koffi Kouassi Paul was cited by BizTechAfrica.com saying, “It’s indeed a forgotten sector that the government needs to look at to attempt to push for a cashless society which I always dreamed of when I was living outside Africa.”

The event is expected to initiate the formulation of regulation to govern e-commerce in Togo and create awareness throughout Togo. The organizers of the event say the Pay Camp forum will attract representatives from IT companies, banks, foreign trade players, micro-finance institutions, local businessmen, and foreign trade players.

However, there is a section of stakeholders who say that the initiative is facing an uphill battle if the country doesn’t first work on getting more Togolese to open up bank accounts and developing the ICT industry. Stakeholders say that the government must also work first on rehabilitating the country’s dilapidated and outdated telecommunication infrastructure.

An IT student, Akoua Gisele said, “We still have a very low number of people that have bank accounts because the conditions of opening one are too sophisticated for the average Togolese. I think that’s the obstacle number one.

Secondly, the internet penetration in Togo is insignificant, but there is also the issue of enforcing or creating a sense of trust in electronic methods of payment.

Diallo Maiga, a local businessman at the Central Market in Lomé said, “I know e-commerce, but I’m not interested because I don’t trust this system due to its high risks.”